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Collateral
3Dnewsletter
Articles
A Moon Shot for Simulation Learning1
In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy
made a radical proposal to a joint session of Congress:
I believe that this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is
out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to the earth. No single space project in this
period will be more impressive to mankind, or more
important for the long-range exploration of space;
and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.2
In September
1962, he elaborated on his plan in a famous address
at Rice University:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose
to go to the moon in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are easy, but because they
are hard, because that goal will serve to organize
and measure the best of our energies and skills, because
that challenge is one that we are willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
intend to win, and the others, too.3
NASA met President Kennedy’s goal
within the decade, landing Apollo 11 on the moon with
164 days to spare. Having spent $127 billion4
in 2003 dollars over the course of the entire Apollo
program, the US reasserted its scientific and technical
leadership over the Soviet bloc and never looked back.
Apollo not only invigorated the nation both technologically
and morally, but created numerous spinoffs, including
Computer-Aided Tomography (CAT), Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI), kidney dialysis machines, cordless power
tools and appliances, and even the theories underlying
complex program management.5
(And, some might add, Tang.)
Like the US space program in 1961, we
in the simulation learning community know how to achieve
lofty goals, even as our knowledge is increasing rapidly.
We have numerous successes to which we can point—and,
yes, a few dramatic failures. Even as the demand for
our products increases exponentially, we face critical
challenges as an industry to respond to this demand.
Global market intelligence and advisory firm IDC has
recently forecast “technology-based simulation
adoption in the corporate sector at an epidemic level
within the next five to seven years,”6
while noting a number of obstacles that must be addressed
to make such adoption possible.
What we need now is the equivalent of
a moon shot: a goal so far above what we have already
achieved that, even while many of us will be imagining
how to make it happen, a few will be saying that it
can’t be done. What we need is a goal so ambitious
that it will unite the industry, accelerate and solidify
standardization efforts, and provide benefits easily
explainable in a sound bite. As with the Apollo Project,
the only organization large enough to propose and fund
such a goal is the US government.
The proposal outlined in this article
meets these targets. It is far beyond anything we have
achieved to date, would bring together the simulation
learning industry, would accelerate standardization,
and both the project and its benefits are easily explainable.
Simply stated, the proposal is that the
US Department of Defense (DoD) set the goal that within
five years, every enlisted and non-commissioned military
specialty will have available complete simulation-based
e-learning courseware.
How lofty a goal is this? According to
the US Army’s recruiting site7
, there are currently 189 Military Occupational Specialties
(MOSes) in that service alone. Most MOSes have multiple
levels. For example, 3Dsolve is currently building simulation-based
e-learning courseware for the US Army Signal Center
and School’s 74B10 Information Systems Operator/Analyst
course. This is only the first level of training for
74Bs, who can go on to 74B20, 74B30, 74B40, and 75B50.
Assuming an average of five levels per MOS, that gives
us a rough estimate of 945 individual courses within
the Army. Extrapolating out over the Navy, Air Force,
and Marine Corps, we get a total of 3,780 individual
courses throughout the DoD8.
The most complex form of Interactive Multimedia
Instruction (IMI) is Level IV, which is simulation-based.
Assuming an average of 160 hours of Level IV instruction
per specialty, at a nominal $25,000 per finished hour,
we arrive at a figure of approximately $15 billion for
the entire program.
According to the Congressional Budget
Office9, the DoD budget
over the period 2005-2009 will total $2.437 trillion.
$15 billion represents just over one-half of one percent
of that total. In other words, for about 1/160th of
its overall budget over the next five years, the DoD
would receive complete simulation-based e-learning courseware
for every enlisted military specialty—nearly 4,000
courses in all. Not the page-turning, screen-scrolling,
filmstrip-in-a-browser courseware of a few years ago,
but challenging, compelling, and engaging courseware
based on interactive simulations of the real world—courseware
for the “Nintendo generation.”
What would be the benefits of this $15
billion moon shot for simulation learning? For the ultimate
users of the courseware—the military students and
their teachers—the benefits would be dramatic:
- Flexibility. Instead
of being tied to a facility, training could take place
anywhere. Instead of occurring only during the workday,
training could take place at any time.
- Cost savings. For many specialties,
students may not need to travel at all, but take the
entire course of instruction at their home base. For
other specialties, time away from home may be greatly
reduced. Education-related travel expenses will drop
significantly.
- Better students. When in-person
participation is required, students can arrive pre-trained
(and certified as such). In-person training can then
focus on the highest value subjects instead of teaching
the basics.
- Better graduates. The average
knowledge retention rate from a lecture10
is only 5 percent. For a demonstration, this rises
to 30 percent. For hands-on practice, the retention
rate climbs to 75 percent—an improvement of 2.5
times over demonstrations and an amazing 15 times
over a lecture. Simulation learning offers hands-on
practice in a virtual environment.
- Sustainment. With anytime,
anywhere training, the same materials used before
and during schooling will continue to be available
to military personnel in the field, providing an instant
refresher course, available whenever and wherever
it is needed—the lifelong learning demanded by
the realities of modern military service.
Taken together, these benefits would give
US soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines the best military
training the world has ever seen, preparing them for
the dangerously fluid world in which we now live, and
in which they must now fight. It is our responsibility
not only as a service or as a government, but as a nation,
to give them no less.
$15 billion is a significant amount by
any standard, but it is entirely possible that this
investment will generate a positive return on investment
within the duration of the effort. Much of the cost
will replace or expand upon required expenditures in
training materials. Moreover, savings due to lower travel
costs, higher graduation rates, and other fiscal benefits
may well offset the remainder of the costs of this program.
As with so many DoD programs, this effort
will have a ripple effect throughout NATO and other
allied nations. Simulation training developed for specific
weapons systems used by allies will be repurposed for
use by foreign personnel. As a result, the standards
set by this training will be adopted by our allies,
leading to a force multiplier effect (or a ‘network
effect’ in civilian parlance). In time, we may
find our allies contributing substantial resources to
this effort, further increasing the return on investment.
A recent paper from the US Army’s
Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) observed:
The dispersed nature of our forces
today and in the future requires new and innovative
training approaches for the networked environment.
To train collaboration skills while maintaining crucial
digital proficiency, these new approaches to training
must capitalize on the potential of distributed-learning
technologies. Exploiting advances in training technologies—such
as interactive simulations available over the Internet,
providing realistic scenarios—will result in
better-quality individual and collective learning
of network-enabled decision-making skills11.
This proposal will accelerate the efforts
of organizations like TRADOC and the Signal Center who
are already pushing forward with high-fidelity simulations
for training.
For the simulation learning community—including
customers, vendors, academia, and others—the benefits
would be equally dramatic:
- Critical mass. This effort
will create a critical mass of simulation-based e-learning
courseware—over 600,000 hours of instruction
in total.
- Standardization. For
the military to effectively deploy and utilize so
much courseware, the process of standards development
and adoption will necessarily accelerate. This process
is underway, with 3DIF—led by Intel, Adobe Systems,
Boeing, and others—as the highest-profile group
working in this area. The sheer scale of this proposal
will force standards adoption to happen even more
rapidly, and on a more widespread basis, than would
otherwise be possible.
- Reusability. The efficient
development of this amount of courseware will demand
that standards move beyond application-level interoperability
to robust, object-level interoperability. If an M16A1
rifle is modeled for a particular simulation, that
model—complete with all its complex behaviors—should
be capable of being dragged and dropped into any other
simulation as needed. This will create an almost unimaginably
vast library of fully reusable, fully interactive
content.
- Technology transfer.
The technology developed to enable this effort will
transfer to the civilian world, enabling private industry
to follow in the wake of the military, maintaining
and enhancing our national competitiveness for decades
to come. This would be especially true if the government
were go beyond commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) requirements
and mandate open source software development and usage
as the basis of the effort.
Over a five-year period, $15 billion works
out to $3 billion per year—just over one-half of
one percent of the overall defense budget, and about
12 cents out of every $100.00 the federal government
spends12. Is 12 cents
too much to ensure we have not only the best trained
troops in the world, but the best trained troops in
history?
More often than many civilians might realize,
the military has led the way forward in American society,
not only technologically, but socially as well. The
GI Bill of 1944 enabled countless veterans to attend
college, creating a generation of educated men and women
who helped enable America’s rise to superpower
status. The military services began the process of racial
integration in 1948, 16 years before the Civil Rights
Act began the same process for civilian society. The
time has come for the military to lead the way forward
once again—in this case, both technologically and
socially, with a moon shot for simulation learning.
Biography
Frank Boosman is Chief Operating Officer and a co-founder
of 3Dsolve Inc. He served as the original product manager
for Adobe Acrobat; designed Tom Clancy SSN,
the first 3D submarine simulation game; co-founded pioneering
game developer Red Storm Entertainment; and co-created
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, the first realistic
first-person tactical combat game.
Notes
1 An abridged version of this
article was published in the August/September 2004 issue
of Training & Simulation Journal.
2 http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j052561.htm.
3 http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j091262.htm.
4 http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap11ann/legacy.htm,
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/inflateCPI.html.
5 http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm.
6 “The Promise and Reality of Technology-Based
Simulations,” Michael Brennan and George Kao, CLO,
May 2004, http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_businessint.asp?articleid=473&zoneid=13.
7 http://www.goarmy.com,
3Dsolve research.
8 This is an approximation. A comprehensive survey leading
to a far more detailed and accurate estimate of the
actual requirements to meet the high-level goal outlined
here would be a worthwhile effort.
9 http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4985&sequence=4.
10 Meister, Jeanne C., Corporate Universities: Lessons
in Building a World-Class Work Force, McGraw-Hill, 1998.
10 http://www.tradoc.army.mil/pao/Web_specials/lifelong_learning/intro.htm.
11 http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4985&sequence=4.
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